Psychology and Achievement | Page 3

real analysis of these important problems,--a serious and scientific analysis with a clear and practical exposition of facts and principles and rules for conduct.
Men and women must be fundamentally trained so that they can look deep into their own minds and see where the screw is loose, where oil is needed, and so readjust themselves and their living for a greater efficiency.
[Sidenote: The Virus of Failure]
The embittered, the superstitious, the prejudiced, all those who scorpion-like sting themselves with the virus of failure, must be given an antidote of understanding that will repair their deranged mental machinery.
The conscientious but foolish business man who is worrying himself into failure and an early grave must be taught the physiological effects of ideas and given a new standard of values.
The profligate must be lured from his emotional excesses and debaucheries, not by moralizings, but by showing him just how these things fritter his energies and retard his progress.
[Sidenote: Practical Formulas for Every Day]
It must be made plain to the successful promoter, to the rich banker, how a man may be a financial success and yet a miserable failure so far as true happiness is concerned, and how by scientific self-development he can acquire greater riches within than all his vaults of steel will hold.
This Basic Course of Reading offers just such an analysis and exposition of fundamental principles. It furnishes definite and scientific answers to the problems of life. It will reveal to you unused or unintelligently used mental forces vastly greater than those now at your command.
[Sidenote: Your Undiscovered Resources]
We go even further, and say that this Basic Course of Reading provides a practicable formula for the everyday use of these vast resources. It will enable you to acquire the magical qualities and still more magical effects that spell success and happiness, without straining your will to the breaking point and making life a burden. It will give you a definite prescription like the physician's, "Take one before meals," and as easily compounded, which will enable you to be prosperous and happy.
In the development of one's innate resources, such as powers of observation, imagination, correct judgment, alertness, resourcefulness, application, concentration, and the faculty of taking prompt advantage of opportunities, the study of the mental machine is bound to be the first step. It must be the ultimate resource for self-training in efficiency for the promoter with his appeal to the cupidity and imaginations of men as surely as for the artist in his search for poetic inspiration.
[Sidenote: Man's Mind Machine]
No man can get the best results from any machine unless he understands its mechanism. We shall draw aside the curtain and show you the mind in operation.
The mastery of your own powers is worth more to you than all the knowledge of outside facts you can crowd into your head. Read and study and practice the teachings of this Basic Course, and they will make you in a new sense the master of yourself and of your future.
In this Basic Course of Reading we shall begin by giving you a thorough understanding of certain mental operations and processes.
[Sidenote: Abjuring Mysticisms]
We shall lead your interest away from "vague mysticisms" and emphasize such phases of scientific psychological theory as bear directly on practical achievement.
We shall give you a practical working knowledge of concentrative mental methods and devices. We shall clear away the mysteries and misapprehensions that now envelop this particular field.
In the present volume we shall begin with a discussion of certain aspects of the relation between the mind and the body.
[Sidenote: Psychology, Physiology and Relationships]
However we look at it, it is impossible to understand the mind without some knowledge of the bodily machine through which the mind works. The investigation of the mind and its conditions and problems is primarily the business of psychology, which seeks to describe and explain them. It would seem to be entirely distinct from physiology, which seeks to classify and explain the facts of bodily structure and operation. But all sciences overlap more or less. And this is particularly true of psychology, which deals with the mind, and physiology, which deals with the body.
It is the mind that we are primarily interested in. But every individual mind resides within, or at least expresses itself through, a body. Upon the preservation of that body and upon the orderly performance of its functions depend our health and comfort, our very lives.
[Sidenote: Abode and instrument of Mind]
Then, too, considered merely as part of the outside world of matter, man's body is the physical fact with which he is most in contact and most immediately concerned. It furnishes him with information concerning the existence and operations of other minds. It is in fact his only source of information about the outside world.
First of all, then, you must form definite and intelligent conclusions concerning